This article is dedicated to my brothers and sisters from Bangladesh, my fellow interns that I had the pleasure of working with, and to the future dreamers of this world.

It all started as a dream. Where poverty is in your face with every step you take, one man imagined a world where poverty would be non-existent. He envisioned a world where the poor were not poor anymore, where they were self-reliant and able to contribute to society both socially and economically, and where poverty was put in museums for eternity. The craziest idea yet, he believed that the poor were bankable! This wild idea, which we now call microfinance, started with a visionary from Chittagong, Bangladesh, named Muhammad Yunus. He started as an economics professor at Chittagong University simply helping women in need and later became a Nobel Laureate and founder of the world-renowned Grameen Bank.

In his book, "Banker to the Poor," he reminisces on how his Microfinance idea started. He talks about how the poorest women of the Jobra village in Chittagong were not able to receive loans from commercial banks because they were not credit worthy, and had no collateral. They were left to borrow money from loan sharks, which put them in bonded labor, or what we call slavery. The loan sharks loaned these women just enough money to survive, and the women had to sell their products to the loan sharks at whatever price the loan sharks decided. This put the women in a poverty trap that looked as if it would never cease. Yunus saw this problem outside his front door and was devastated, brainstorming of different ways he could end this grueling cycle of poverty for the women. He went from household to household finding out how much these women owed so he could possibly help them break from out of bondage from the loan sharks.

After doing this, he calculated that there were 47 women in the villages who in total owed 856 takas or 27 USD to the money lenders. Yes, only a mere 27 USD. Yunus was appalled after hearing this news of women being in a life or death bondage for only 27 USD in total! He lent the money to the women to break from the burdens of the money lender and allowed them to pay back whenever they could. Although this small act of generosity was beneficial to the women, Yunus did not want it to end here. He did not want this to be a simple act of giving money to a poor person who needed it. He saw this as an institutional problem that needed to be fixed. Yunus states, “Handing out money is a way of shielding ourselves from addressing the real issue. Handing out a pittance is a way of making ourselves think we have done something and of feeling good for having shared our good fortune with the poor. In fact, we are leaving the problem alone. We have merely thrown money at it and walked away. But for how long?” (42 Yunus and Jolis).

After this realization, we have the birth of the Grameen Bank. From the small villages of Jobra to the mean streets of Manhattan,NY, from 42 women to over nine million borrowers, Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank are in the process of not only eliminating poverty and empowering women in Bangladesh but all over the world.

So to everyone who believes that all poor people are lazy, that they deserve the problems they face, and that they are destroying the world, YOU are the real problem. This story goes to show that the poorest women in a Muslim country can make the most out of their lives. They did not ask for handouts or money to pay bills and other expenses. They simply wanted opportunity, and with that, they were able to break from the poverty trap and create a sustainable living for their families. Now these women are owning their own businesses, creating jobs for other people, and repaying their loans at a rate of 97%! Unbelievable right? Wrong. With motivation, with persistence, with opportunity, anything is possible. Even an idea as crazy as loaning money to poor people can work with the right Dreamers behind it. In the great words of Professor Muhammad Yunus, "All people are entrepreneurs, but many don't have the opportunity to find that out."

Thank you, and again, stay woke my beautiful brothers and sisters.